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Golden Cockerels

6/10/2016

Skylar Brandt, left, as the Golden Cockerel vs Beyonce

Thanks to a tardy diva, this week I saw Beyoncé’s Formation Tour at Citi Field and ABT’s new production of The Golden Cockerel at the Met Opera House within a fourteen hour time span. Who knew the leads in both productions would be sporting the same look? Who wore it better? Queen Bey, bien sûr.

After waiting around for hours for Beyonce’s set to begin on Tuesday night, there was no way I was going to be stuck sitting in my seat early for the Wednesday matinee. Alas, I overestimated the MTA, which was running as late as the diva during an afternoon thunderstorm, and I didn’t have any time to read the ballet’s synopsis before it began. Boy was I lost! The Golden Cockerel has a convoluted history as a politically banished opera (1909) and a one-act ballet (1914), with a literary provenance involving Pushkin (1834) rewriting Washington Irving (1832). This all sounded intriguing to me, unfortunately the results were not. ABT’s new production is a revival of Alexei Ratmansky’s 2012 resurrection of the piece for the Royal Danish Ballet. The original ballet for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo (which was Fokine’s last choreographic effort) was a one act, 45 minute affair. Ratmansky chose to flesh out the ballet using more of the score from Rimsky-Korsakov's 1909 opera so that it became a full-length vehicle, which was a problem.

The lavish sets and costumes, by Richard Hudson after Natalia Goncharova’s Ballet Russe designs, were wonderful: folksy, vivid, whimsical. But great sets and costumes alone are not enough to make a great ballet; they can make for a great fashion show, sure, but those usually last around 15 minutes tops. The ballet had enough set changes, giant puppets, swirling skirts, and elaborate scrims to fuel a 45 minute piece, certainly, but not more. I will not attempt to summarize the plot here, because I’m still a little confused even though I have the program open in front of me now. Also, it was so dumb I couldn’t really care. But I was baffled at intermission when I finally got to check out the program and realized that the man galumphing around in the grey wizard beard was James Whiteside. I thought he was supposed to be the male dancing lead? He must change into ballet shoes for the second act, I assumed. No such luck. Although James looked like he was enjoying the chance to play against type, this bit of casting did nothing for me.

Hee Seo danced the lead role of the seductress Queen Shemakhan with her usual loveliness. Her beautiful, melting port de bras was appropriately erotic but her character made absolutely no sense and was more of a placeholder. That was too bad, because I have seen her excel in Ratmanksy pieces before—particularly Seven Sonatas--and their pairing was one of the reasons I chose to see this production. Perhaps, since Ratmanksy went to the trouble of lengthening a thin premise anyway, her motives and storyline could have been elaborated to better effect.

As it was, the story revolved mainly around the doddering Tsar Dodon—a character role inhabited well enough by Roman Zhurbin—and his foibles as a ruler. His princely sons got the most dancing in the production and were therefore the highlight of the show, even though they died in battle at the beginning of the second act. Arron Scott and Alexandre Hammoudi danced these roles well, and their solos had some interesting circus-like aspects to them (like splits and cartwheels) that fit nicely into the cartoonish vibe of the production.

And what of the title role? Sarah Lane’s Golden Cockerel was technically strong and engaging, but the part felt too much like a cameo appearance. Her first entrance with James Whiteside in the Tsar’s palace was the most choreographically innovative section of the ballet and I had high hopes. She performed prickly bent leg toe-hops, and I liked how she repeatedly folded to a kneeling position on the floor like a mechanical doll. But that was basically her whole gig. Even as my mind wandered during the second act (I haven’t been that bored at the ballet in a long while) from which she was largely absent, I was excited for her to peck the Tsar to death in the finale. I thought that would be so cool, a sort of feminist vindication for all of the tragic-avian heroines in the history of ballet: Odette and her coterie, the Firebird, the Nightingale.

Sadly, in the brief, murderous scene, Lane was shuttled around by two men in cumbersome black cloaks (the dead princes doing double duty—maybe black or gold unitards would have been subtler?) so she could perch and peck on the Tsar’s shoulders for a second before being carried offstage. What a letdown—so much for ladybird empowerment! In general, there were far too many females being wheelbarrowed around the stage by two men in this production. Hee Seo and Sarah Lane were repeatedly dragged around by Zhurbin and Whiteside, or Scott and Hammoudi. In Act II Devon Teuscher was also shoveled along by Calvin Royal III and Jose Sebastien in a weird bit that felt tacked on. They seemed like they were there just to showcase very long, Pierrot-like sleeves.

At the end, the James Whiteside character explained—much like Puck in his “If we shadows have offended” passage at the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (both the play and the Balanchine ballet)—that the whole thing had been made up. He walked past clock-like, tic-toc motion vignettes of the main characters in the story to prove his point. There was Craig Salstein as some sort of henchman, Tatiana Ratmansky as a busybody housekeeper, the long-sleeved trio, and the two princes stabbing each other in the stomach back and forth. Wait, what? Did they kill each other? The program said they died defending their father’s kingdom in battle. If they had a Cain and Abel backstory going on I’d definitely have been more interested in that!

The Golden Cockerel made me understand anew why Balanchine pared down so many of the old story ballets into dance-heavy one-acts: like his Swan Lake, and especially, his sumptuous, Chagall-designed Firebird (with which The Golden Cockerel shared many similarities, and which dates from roughly the same era). It was a shame that ABT spent so much money on the production, for the audience buzz was not favorable during intermission or afterwards. “Where was the dancing?” people kept asking. “What was going on?” was the main query on the bathroom line. At least it took me only half an hour to get home, instead of the two-hour odyssey I had back from Queens the night before! More on that experience next time…

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Ben Lerner Essay/ A Personal Announcement

5/19/2016

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Russell Janzen and I recently went to hear Ben Lerner read at the New School. Russell turned me on to Lerner’s writing a few years ago, and since then I have become a little obsessed. I loved his novels Leaving the Atocha Station and 10:04, but I was quite surprised when I read an excerpt from his new essay “The Hatred of Poetry” in the April edition of Poetry Magazine (to be published in its entirety on June 7th) and found myself analogizing several of his thoughts on the stigmatization of poetry to the ballet world. Lerner writes in the excerpted essay that, “some kids take piano lessons, some kids study tap dance, but we don’t say every kid is a pianist or dancer.” I have to disagree with Lerner here. For at least in the latter case, people most certainly do!

“If you are an adult foolish enough to tell another adult that you are (still!) a poet, they will often describe to you their falling away from poetry: I wrote it in high school, I dabbled in college. They will tell you they have a niece or nephew who writes poetry….There is embarrassment for the poet—couldn’t you get a real job and put your childish ways behind you?” Lerner writes. I laughed as I read these lines, for if you switch out poetry for dance it becomes a conversation that most professional dancers have frequently.

Often, when I explain that I am a ballet dancer people will say “oh yes, I did that” or “my daughter is a dancer too.” In reality, they took dance when they were five and their daughters are fourteen and on cheerleading squads or in competitions—which is great, but it is not quite the same as performing seven shows a week for years! Sometimes people ask me what my day job is, or what I will do next. There is little consideration that ballet dancing could be a real occupation. Though of course, they are correct in that one cannot practice ballet forever, as one could potentially write poetry well into old age. But still, their dismissal ignores the fact that dance could be a multiple-decades long, quite serious (if not very lucrative) endeavor.

Lerner continues: “when you are foolish enough to identify yourself as a poet your interlocutor will often ask you to name your favorite poets. When you say, “Cyrus Console” he squints as if searching his memory and nods as if he can almost recall the work and the name, even though of course he can’t (none of the hundreds of non-poet acquaintances who have asked you this sort of question ever can).” This passage also resonates, for unless I respond with Baryshnikov or Nureyev I will get a blank stare. Perhaps current ABT principal Misty Copeland is becoming one such household name, but the truth is that the general public is not well educated on trends in the field. Obviously if you follow this obscure blog you are not the random airplane seatmate, for example, to whom I am referring!

If I can make it clear that I am a dancer, and that it is my sole source of income and it is indeed a full-time job, they will become skeptical again when I reply to further inquiry that my favorite ballet is not Swan Lake but Serenade or Concerto Barocco. Naturally they have never heard of it, and then they think I must be in some amateur troupe. (Balanchine and neo-classicism are not in common parlance outside of New York.) There is nothing wrong with that, in the same way that I enjoy poetry, read it sometimes, and had no idea who Cyrus Console was either. But I was not surprised that a working poet did not respond with Keats.

It is wonderful that so many people take ballet classes in childhood, yet I find it unfortunate that their conception of an entire art form is frequently crystallized in that fledgling experience. I also believe that people intuitively respond to movement and can find aesthetic pleasure in it, but somehow that appreciation is not widely cultivated in our society. I was taught the difference between Impressionism and Mannerism in public elementary school, but there was not much in the way of dance education.  Dance fandom becomes a study in esoterica if that passion survives into adulthood.

At the reading, Lerner did not select an excerpt from his new essay but instead chose one from 10:04, perhaps because he is far more famous for being a novelist than for being a poet. But during the Q&A session afterwards he spoke about how he will always describe himself as a poet, because he feels that it is who he truly is, even if he is now known for something else. He spoke of poetry the way dancers speak of dancing—like it is a calling or an identity rather than a hobby or a livelihood.

I have been thinking a lot about this lately because I am pregnant. I am so incredibly excited about my new role as a mother, but it is funny to feel utterly divorced from my dancing life as my body changes and my waistline expands. Unlike some dancers—notably NYCB principal Ashley Bouder, who was able to take ballet class in pointe shoes past her due date!—I was forced to stop dancing before the end of my first trimester. My baby and I danced through some hectic weeks of Nutcracker, but by the time the Winter Season began I became so nauseous ("morning" sickness can apparently be a 24 hour affair) and exhausted that it was impossible to keep up a healthy gestational weight. Ballet dancing in peak physical form is hard work, ballet dancing on an empty stomach is nearly impossible. My doctor—and my instinct—told me it was necessary to bow out and take it easy.

The pregnancy books recommend that women disclose their pregnancies to their employers at four or five months along. Ha, as if that could be possible for a dancer! Even the indomitable Ashley could not perform too far into her second trimester, and there was definitely no hiding the fact that she was pregnant much earlier than that. Since I had to stop dancing before I wanted to announce my pregnancy to the company and the public, I was in a tough situation. Luckily ballet mistress Rosemary Dunleavy helped me to drop out quietly midway through the season. I am forever grateful to her for being so understanding and supportive. I was sorry that my little one did not get to be a part of such moving, iconic works as The Four Temperaments and Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto #2, but clearly he or she—my partner and I have decided to leave it a surprise—wanted no part in dancing!

Tricky logistics and a lousy first trimester aside, the experience of being pregnant has been absolutely fascinating to me. I am sure most mothers feel that way, but I think for dancers—who are so attuned to their bodies—it is a time of particularly heightened sensations. I knew right away that I was pregnant, before a urine test would work, because my body felt immediately different. Even while I was able to perform through my first few months, everything felt wonky. My muscles were looser, my center of gravity was constantly shifting. My partner David Prottas kept asking me during Symphony in C: “are you on your leg? I can’t tell.” Hehe, I couldn’t either. My pelvis seemed to be in a different place every day. My colleagues claim not to have noticed a difference in my appearance, but my tutus certainly fit differently. Even as I was losing pounds my breasts and abdomen were growing and I was loosening the hooks of stiff bodices.

Even more bizarre was the inability to control my own eating habits. As a dancer, I must consciously plan my meals around maximizing nutritional energy. By my third month of pregnancy, I could not stand the sight of meat. I was having all sorts of odd cravings and (mostly) aversions; it was so hard to ensure that I was getting enough protein. I found it incredible that something the size of a blueberry could dictate so many aspects of my life. Now that I am further along I am loving the feeling of the baby dancing around on its own all day, and all through the night!

It seems that there are as many different pregnancy experiences as there are pregnant bodies. I know that Ashley, as well as new NYCB mothers Maria Kowroski and Abi Stafford, had very little morning sickness throughout their pregnancies. Some dancers have come back from childbirth very quickly, for others it takes much longer. Many women have told me that the experience was radically different with each child they had. The first lesson in motherhood seems to be that you cannot control everything, and it is a humbling one.

I am doing more reviewing on this blog now that I am not performing, as many of you have noticed. Thank you to everyone who has inquired about my absence! For now I am taking it day by day and listening to my body, which is essentially what I do when I am dancing anyway. So maybe these identities—mother, dancer—are not so incongruous after all.

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Sneak Peek: American Rhapsody

5/4/2016

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Unity Phelan practices backstage, photo by Janie Taylor

Tiler Peck in rehearsal for American Rhapsody, photo by Janie Taylor

I am not able to attend the NYCB Spring Gala this evening, but this afternoon I did make it to the dress rehearsal of Christopher Wheeldon’s American Rhapsody—to George Gershwin’s familiar Rhapsody in Blue—which premieres tonight. I don’t have much time to write about it, and I don’t exactly think rehearsals should be reviewed—since I know from experience that live performance alters and adds to any ballet—but I thought I’d jot down a few fleeting impressions here to promote the hard work of my colleagues before their big debut. I was also eager to see the costume designs of my good friend Janie Taylor. This piece is her second ballet as a costumer for the company, after Justin Peck’s Everywhere We Go.

First of all, I thought Janie’s costumes were gorgeous! She has a gift for taking staid ballet silhouettes and tweaking them so that they seem radically new, and her designs for this ballet are no different. In this case she took a typical skirted bodice and gave it a bump at the hip—not exactly a peplum—but a little exaggerated shelf. Thus the dancers’ waists appeared flatteringly nipped. The pale pink skirts were bias-cut with a darker tomato red underneath which was also cool. The men had a refreshing, asymmetrical twist on a vest and tie. Her colors were strikingly unconventional, with deep blue playing off pink, tomato, and teal. Unity Phelan and Amar Ramasar were stunning in the solid tomato color. And the ballet’s leads, Robbie Fairchild and Tiler Peck, stood out in a deep mallard. The backdrop by Cuban painter Leslie Sardinias was also stunning. It had a lot of energy and it seemed to almost move with Mark Stanley's different lighting changes. I liked the twilit effect it produced during the central pas de deux.

This ballet marks a post-Broadway reunion for Chris and Robbie (and Gershwin!) after An American in Paris, and I thought it served as a nice transition back to the realm of ballet. It is plotless but it evokes an atmosphere of playful jazziness. Tiler Peck has to be one of the silkiest movers ever, and from her first entrance of smooth chaîné turns straight down the center line, to her sultry wallowing on the floor, she nailed the Gershwin vibe. Robbie seemed equally at ease in the vocabulary, and their fluid partnering was a pleasure.

Amar and Unity jetted in and out of the proceedings with happy poise. I liked when Amar was temporarily distracted by a twirling Kristin Segin while he rested against the wing in the front corner. Chris made the sea of blue corps dancers into many sculptural tableaux—something I feel he hasn’t done as frequently before. It was a lovely effect. I also liked a superman lift motif—in which the men lay on their backs and floated the women horizontally over them like in a child’s game. A lot of the vocabulary was more pedestrian than I’m used to with Chris—in a good way. He had the dancers slouch over, sit on the ground, and strut around.

The ballet climaxed with a rousing group marching step to the score’s bass-heavy musical peak, which always reminds me a bit of Prokofiev’s ball music in Romeo and Juliet. It was fun and rousing before the ensemble settled into one final chained tableau to Gershwin’s dying strains. I will be curious to see the piece in performance, and to see how it is formally reviewed. But from my early glimpse I thought it succeeded at what it aimed to be: a pleasant romp through a famous score.

The American Rhapsody production teamat the Gala, photo by Marguerite Mehler

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Miami City Ballet

4/25/2016

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Heatscape, photo by Gene Schiavone

I wasn’t planning on writing about the Miami City Ballet performance that I saw last week, but I kept thinking about it and decided that the dancers were too good to go unmentioned. I caught the second program the troupe offered during their weeklong run at the Koch Theater, and all three pieces—including a vintage Balanchine ballet—were new to me.

The evening commenced with Heatscape by Justin Peck to a piano concerto by Bohuslav Martinu. I liked it. It was energetic—even the slow second movement contained frantic tosses and partnering which ran over the adagio melody—and the Miamians know from energy! The ballet was set before a big Shepard Fairey backdrop which, curiously, reminded me of a biker bandana. The lovely white shift dresses for the women and grayish shorts for the men were designed by Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung—I thought Tricia Alberton’s long-sleeved version with black piping was especially pretty. Jeanette Delgado danced her thorny solo passages with real flair. Like her sister Patricia, Jeannette has an easy-going, joy-of-dance quality in performance which is so infectious. My favorite moment in the ballet was when the corps joined Albertson in the second movement for slow hops en pointe in fifth position. It was a nice riff on the second movement of Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco.

Liam Scarlett’s Viscera followed, and it suffered from having a similar structure to Heatscape. It was also set to a piano concerto (by Lowell Liebermann), it also featured a cast of 16, Jeannette Delgado was back in a tricky soloist role, and the corps ran in and out in noodle-y formations like in the Peck piece. The overall feel of Viscera was much darker, but that aspect conferred ponderousness instead of drama. The long central pas de deux looked rather like a rip-off of Christopher Wheeldon’s iconic Polyphonia at times, with its purple leotards, dark lighting (by John Hall), and upside-down swastika lifts. Scarlett—like Wheeldon—has some innovative partnering ideas, but this was not his best effort.

The evening’s finale was Balanchine’s infrequently performed Bourrée Fantasque from 1949. I have always been curious about this ballet, since it is the source of the famous, glamorous photo of Tanaquil Le Clercq wielding a fan over Jerome Robbins perched on his rump. The music is by French composer Emmanuel Chabrier and the ballet reflects Balanchine’s years in Paris watching the can-can dancers at the Moulin Rouge. I can see why it has fallen out of NYCB’s repertory, for it resembles a mash-up of many of Balanchine’s other works: particularly Western Symphony (1954), Danses Concertantes (1972, after 1944), and the third movement of Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet (1966). But it was so thrilling to see a brand new (to me) Balanchine piece! And the gorgeous Karinska costumes! The witty tone and the complex geometries and musical counterpoints made by the corps de ballet were refreshing. The craftsmanship of the whole piece, which was staged for MCB by Suzy Pilarre, was excellent. Incredibly, even second-tier Balanchine is superior to the top-shelf works of many others.

The first movement was led by Jordan-Elizabeth Long and Shimon Ito in the roles created by Le Clercq and Robbins. Their pas de deux was a variation on a favorite Balanchine joke: the small guy/tall gal pairing. They were spot-on in their technique and their humor. The crisp precision of the corps was outstanding. And the short, sassy tutus worn by the women were adorable. The second movement, a lush adagio in romantic tutus, was well-danced by Simone Messmer and Rainer Krenstetter. It was so good to see Simone back onstage in NY!

The massive finale unfolded much like that of Theme and Variations, with accumulating corps couples meeting on center and parting, followed by demi-soloists couples (Zoe Zien and Ashley Knox were back again, having changed out of their 1st movement costumes), and finally the cheery principles Nathalia Arja and Renato Penteado. But then the dancers from every movement returned for one of the biggest Balanchine finales I’ve ever seen. Tutus short and long were swirled about in kaleidoscopic patterns and the Koch’s massive stage was full to the brim. It felt a bit everything-but-the-kitchen-sink, but it was exhilarating.

The Miami City Ballet dancers must be commended for their passionate dancing throughout the evening. The troupe is not as big as the NYCB, and both programs they brought to NY contained large-scale ballets. This meant that many dancers were doing double and triple duty: like the tirelessly committed Jeannette Delgado and Shimon Ito, and the scene-stealing Zoe Zien—who was featured in the first two ballets and popped up in two more movements in the closer. I hope these talented dancers got a good rest after their tour, they certainly earned it!

Le Clercq and Robbins in Bourree Fantasque, photo by George Platt Lynes

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Martha Graham Celebrates 90

4/16/2016

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Martha Graham as Jocasta in Night Journey

Thursday night kicked off the Martha Graham Dance Company’s four-show run at City Center in honor of the troupe’s 90th anniversary. Two classic Graham takes on ancient Greek mythology--Night Journey (1947) and Cave of the Heart (1946)—framed Inner Resources, a world premiere by Marie Chouinard, and the NY premiere of AXE (2015) by Mats Ek. The Graham works were vibrantly performed and appeared to be in great shape, the two newer offerings were lopsided.

Night Journey, which opened the program, is Graham’s retelling of Sophocles’s Oedipus from Jocasta’s point of view. It is a stellar work, from the Graham-designed costumes to the Isamu Noguchi scenery. George Balanchine was surely influenced by this work when he made Orpheus in 1948, which also featured sets and props by Noguchi. Graham (1894-1991) and Balanchine (1904-1983) were contemporaries, and though they worked within different genres, there are many overlapping aspects to their choreography. Moments from the Four Temperaments, Symphony in Three Movements, and many other ballets that are so familiar to me kept popping to mind while I watched the Graham dancers. Graham’s influence looms large in many of Jerome Robbins’s ballets too--Night Journey frequently evoked The Cage. Deborah Jowitt notes in her biography of Robbins that he studied Graham technique in Greenwich Village for a time in his youth.

Night Journey begins and ends with Tiresias, the blind seer, forcefully slamming his walking cane into the ground. In the beginning he strikes the floor with his stick on huge chords in William Schuman’s music, at the end of the piece he repeats the movement while passing across the front panel of the stage in silence. Though this framing step emphasizes the inevitability of his dire prognostications, the real power in this piece derives from its women.

Blakely White-McGuire was captivating as Jocasta. She has strong, broad shoulders yet she comes across as exceedingly feminine—an intriguing combination that reminded me of former NYCB principal Jennie Somogyi. Her Jocasta was passionate and forceful, and she remained firmly in command during a heated duet with Lorenzo Pagano as Oedipus. Xin Ying was also excellent as the leader of the all-female Greek chorus. The choreography for this group of women was thrilling, with the women doing deep

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Golden Cockerels

Ben Lerner Essay/ A Personal Announcement

Sneak Peek: American Rhapsody

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